


The King v the Right to Raise Hands

by alamorn



Category: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 17:50:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13036311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/pseuds/alamorn
Summary: Lawmaking has its own unique challenges.





	The King v the Right to Raise Hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arsenic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/gifts).



> Warnings for some misogynistic and sex worker unfriendly language and non-graphic violence, mostly not against women.
> 
> Bess is the one who suggested burning down Vortigern's favorite palace.

There’s always a man as thinks he can hit a whore. Arthur didn’t stand for that when he lived in the whorehouse. Now that he lives in the palace, he found he had more ways not to stand for it than taking the blows himself.

“It will never work.” The Mage drifted in and out as she pleased. It amused him that his new laws about striking a woman were what brought her back this time. He doubted she cared overmuch if she herself was struck.

“Have some faith.”

“How will you enforce it? What will you do when your enforcer strikes his wife? It will not work.”

When he only controlled the Bridge, he could keep his own eyes on things. Now that he ran an entire country, well. “You’re my guide, aren’t you? Guide me.”

“Would you be a witch-king like your uncle before you?” she asked, scornful. “Would you look out the eyes of every bird and rat and crawling thing, spy on the kingdom and take the hands of every man who lifted them? You must have enforcers before you have laws.”

Arthur finally looked over at her. She sat on the stairs to the throne he hardly used, wrapped in a travel worn green cloak. Her face was pinched, her eyes tired, and a bruise crept up from under her collar.

He used his chin to point at it. “Would my new law have saved you that?”

She snorted. “No man did this.”

He nodded and pulled his chair over, straddled it facing her. “Before you tear my law apart too much, maybe you should meet who drafted it.”

She tilted her head.

She’d met some of the girls while they were in the hideout. Not all — the Mage was not a sociable creature, and was not prone to making conversation. She’d met the ones that participated at the war councils, though he wasn’t sure she knew their names. He wasn’t sure she knew anyone’s names but his and possibly Bedivere’s. She had a tendency to stare directly at her subject and that always managed to get the point across.

But Bess was the only one who’d spoken at the war council, so he decided to reintroduce them, first. Bess’s nails were still regrowing from when she’d been captured by Vortigern. Arthur always found himself taking her hand to check their progress. She’d joined the brothel when he was twelve and she was fourteen and she’d played with him when they weren’t working. He liked to check up on her.

“Bess,” he said, interrupting a conversation she was having with Goosefat. “You’ve met the Mage, yeah?”

Bess flicked her gaze over the Mage. She was the taller of the women, and had a lot of years of anger stored up inside her. The anger made her eyes look bright and lively, something stupider men often mistook for flirtation. “We’ve sat at the same table,” she allowed finally.

“Well, the Mage had some questions about that law you’re helping me draft,” he said, not at all abashed to fob the problem off on someone who could handle it. The Mage might have been as inexorable and powerful as the tide, but Bess had spent years convincing men of what they wanted. He was fairly certain she could turn that tide.

“Yes,” the Mage said. “How will you enforce it? Who will pay? How will you know?”

Bess turned to her, eyes growing brighter and more lively. Goosefat took his leave with a sardonic look, and Arthur ushered the women into the throne room, where they sat at the Table.

He lounged on the throne while they talked. At first they had each glanced over at him — Bess was wondering what his angle was, and the Mage, he was pretty sure, was just annoyed to have been forced into a real conversation — but once they got started, they forgot him entirely.

By the time they remembered him, they’d agreed that money and marriage were the sticking points. The working girls who’d raised him would have turned away violent men if they could have afforded it. As they couldn’t, they took the blows. There would have to be money put aside for women so they could say no. And a married woman could not bring a suit against her husband, if in doing so, she forsook all possessions to him.

“You’ve given me two more laws to enact,” he said, amused. “And this will fill in the holes of the first?”

Bess and the Mage looked at each other, then back at him. “It’s a start,” Bess said, and the Mage’s lip curled with grim satisfaction.

The Black Legs had been hanging on in a reduced capacity, just because he wasn’t sure what to do with them — they were just men, mostly, with ties to money rather than Vortigern. He’d even liked Jack’s Eye, corrupt old bastard that he was. Once he paid their wages and wrote the laws and kicked out the ones who took bribes and brought violence to his streets, he had hopes that they would be a useful tool, rather than something to maneuver around.

He put Rowen in charge of Londinium. Well — he put her in charge of the Black Legs in Londinium, with George at her side to keep her safe and carry the weight of her word. Rowen had run the brothel for as long as Arthur could remember. At some point when he was still young, she’d moved from working the floor to working the books. She had steel gray hair and fine lines around her eyes, and she’d managed the Black Legs at their door well before he came around.

Now she would be in charge of them.

“If anyone tries to disrespect you,” he said, helping her into the carriage that would take her from Camelot to Londinium, “you put George on them, alright? I mean it, you can kill anyone you like. I’m the king, you know, I can make sure you get away with it.”

She laughed at him, those fine lines crinkling, and lay a kiss on his brow. “And when a battered woman comes to me, I will set her up in the shelter, and send George after the man that did it, take all his money and anything else she wants, and give her a job. We’ve been over it.”

“If it works in Londinium, it’ll work everywhere,” he said, looking up at her. He was nervous, he realized. His hands were sweating.

“Trust me, Arthur,” she said.

He nodded jerkily, and closed her in with one last squeeze of her hand. He stopped George on his horse and said, “Take care of her, will you?”

George shook his head. “We’ve been taking care of each other for years, Art. Stop fussing.”

Arthur did not stop fussing, but he managed to see them off anyway. Bess ended up kicking him out the throne room because he was pacing too much. He ended up in the yard, dodging the dives of Mage controlled birds, Excalibur clutched in his hands. He wasn’t striking — the Mage would not stand for him to attack her creatures while she was inside them — just dodging. Birds were faster than men, especially her eagle, who bombed from the sky and screamed in his face. They were not as fast as arrows, though, and so it was a good practice, and an exhausting one. It was most tiring when she made him set Excalibur aside and dodge with only his own speed.

It took only a week before the head of the Londinium Black Legs was standing before him, complaining. Arthur didn’t hear much of the complaint, if he was being perfectly honest, because the second the man said, “Your up jumped old whore,” he started hearing a roaring in his ears and readied himself to fight — stretching, flexing his hands, bouncing on his toes so his muscles were loose and warm.

“What are you doing?” the Black Leg asked, when he started shadowboxing.

“You’ve got a problem with my laws,” Arthur said. “I hear you. It’s not the way you’re used to doing things. So we’ll do it how you’re used to.” The man looked smug for just a moment, until Arthur said, “One on one. Winner gets to make the rules.”

“Your Majesty…” the Black Leg said, face a cheesy white.

“None of that now,” Arthur said cheerfully. “I’m just Arthur, raised in a brothel. You know me. No swords, no bloodlines.” And he struck, a rabbit punch to the nose that sent the man reeling.

It was a good fight, once the asshole started hitting back. It left his ribs a deep, aching purple, but the Black Leg lost and went off to lick his wounds far from Rowen.

Arthur bounced away from the fight well pleased and hurting with the satisfying pain of blows well taken. His blood was up too high to hear petitioners, so he set Bedivere on the throne and roamed Camelot. He was half looking for one of his knights to bout against — he’d been considering giving one of them Excalibur, seeing if they could use it. It’d be a pretty trick, though he wasn’t sure what the use would be yet. He wasn’t at war, after all.

Instead he found Bess and the Mage walking in the gardens. He’d never seen the Mage just chatting before, and he regarded the whole situation with a mixture of delight and suspicion. “Coming up with more laws for me?” he asked and they looked over at him. The bruise on the Mage’s collarbone had faded to an ugly yellow and the sight made his own bruised ribs throb.

“No,” the Mage said. “Not yet.”

“Give us time,” Bess said, with her bright eyes.

“You want a seat at the Table?” he asked her. “Or a title? I’d love to be able to shove all this off on you.”

“Not a chance, _Your Majesty_ ,” she said, laughing at him. “I prefer to be the power behind the throne.”

“Long as you don’t burn this palace down while I’m in it,” he said, grinning.

She smiled at him, then turned to the Mage and touched her hand. Surprisingly, the Mage allowed it. “Find me when you’re done, will you?”

The Mage nodded and Bess left, tossing a goodbye over her shoulder.

Arthur found himself rocking between toes and heels, hands in pockets, as he looked at the Mage. Lately, he found she made him tongue tied, a situation he was unused to, and one that left them with an unsatisfying dearth of conversation.

It wasn’t that she was pretty, or mean, or magic. He was used to pretty women, and mean women, and he had always taken her magic well in stride.

“You’re injured,” she said, and he glanced down. None of his bruises peeked above _his_ collar, so he wasn’t sure what had given him away.

“Not badly,” he said, and she drew close, reached out, prodded his ribs. He hissed and let her.

“Just bruised,” she said. “By whom?”

He shrugged. “A Black Leg, didn’t like the new laws. You and Bess been spending time together much lately?”

She drifted away from him and started to pick an assortment of the herbs in the garden. He followed, because it seemed the thing to do. “She’s angry,” the Mage said, approving.

“Furious,” Arthur agreed.

“So am I,” the Mage said, which was the most she’d ever said of her own emotional state. He found it unsurprising, but it was nice to have her share it.

“So what do you two talk about? Anger?”

“And other things.” She leveled a look at him. “They are nothing to do with you. When they are, you will know.”

“Bess is my friend,” he said, holding up his hands. “Just want to make sure you’ll be good to her.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Go to your room.”

“I don’t know if you know this,” he said, “but you’re my guide, not my mum.”

“Or the kitchen. Unless you would rather your ribs heal on their own.”

“If you’re holding my good health hostage,” he said, grinning, “I guess I’ll have to play along.”

He went, and found Bess along the way. “Hold my hand?” he asked, batting his lashes at her.

She rolled her eyes too, but followed him to his room. He wasn’t able to get any more out of her than the Mage about what they talked about, just, “I don’t think she’s had a friend in a long time,” which Arthur had no doubt was correct.

Just as he was getting restless again, the Mage appeared, cradling a steaming clay bowl. “Take your shirt off,” she said, and he did so with only minimal teasing.

He put his head in Bess’ lap while the Mage spread the warm salve over his ribs. Bess threaded her fingers through his hair.

“You’re a good boy, Arthur,” she told him. “We always knew you’d make something of yourself.”

The Mage made a sound that he would have called a snort in someone less terrifying. On her, it was pure derision. “It’s in his blood,” she said, and he watched her glance up and meet Bess’ gaze. “But Vortigern had the same blood. Ambition is nothing without shape.”

“You saying you’re glad I grew up in a brothel?” he asked, amused. Bess tugged his hair.

“Yes,” the Mage said. The sharp plant smell of her salve made his eyes water.

“I’m not,” Bess said. “No one should grow up in a brothel.”

“No one should grow up in a palace,” the Mage returned. “It is what it is. We have all benefited from it.”

When Bess’ fingers tightened painfully in his hair, he put a hand over hers. “The Mage is saying I would have been a right ponce if I grew up wearing a crown. That’s all, Bess.”

Slowly, her grip relaxed. She smoothed his hair down in apology.

“A monster,” the Mage said. “You would have been a monster. Raised by Vortigern.”

Arthur didn’t shudder at the thought, but that was because she was looking, with those intent eyes of hers. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. “I’d have had a dad and mum, too,” he pointed out. None of the girls had let him call them “mum” when he was growing up. They’d been aunties and sisters and cousins and the girls, not a family but they’d raised him all the same.

She shrugged at him and said, “Stand.”

He pushed himself up with a groan and she examined his sides and back before she put more salve on. When she was done, she wrapped him in linen so tight he felt it as he breathed, a resistance more than a restriction. “Don’t get in another fight until tomorrow,” she said and Bess laughed.

“It’ll fix him that quick?” she asked, brow raised.

“No,” the Mage said. “I don’t want to have to do this again today.”

Bess laughed again, the tension of their earlier words going out of her. Her eyes were still bright, but it seemed there would not be a fight between them. Or at least not at the moment. The Mage left quickly after that, and Bess followed shortly after.

The salve itched, and Arthur still hadn’t settled from his nervous energy. He found himself roaming again, out of the palace and into the city that butted up against its walls. Habit had him leaving by himself, hands and sword belt empty.

He roamed until the sun was low and the shadows spilled long over the streets. As he passed through the gates he spotted the Mage and waved her over to walk with him.

“Did you get yourself punched?” she asked, dry as dust.

He grinned at her. “Nah, not this time,” he said. She glanced over his shoulder and her face changed, but before he could decipher how, there was a hard hand on his shoulder and a knife at his back.

“This the bitch behind the throne?” the Black Leg hissed. The tip of the blade dug through Arthur’s shirt and bandages to prick sharply at his skin.

Arthur put his hands up, slow, glancing around for his guards. “Let’s not say things we’ll regret,” he said, as soothingly as he could. It still came out more a warning.

The Mage blinked and her eyes went slit and liquid and yellow.

“What’s she doing?” The Black Leg asked, pushing harder with the knife. “Tell her to stop.”

“Mate,” Arthur said, “I can’t tell her to do anything.”

The eagle screamed above them and Arthur dove for the ground. When he rolled to his feet, the eagle was beating the air above the Black Leg and blood was streaming down his face, the white of his skull showing through where the eagle had raked him.

The guards were headed for them and Arthur was set and ready for the next time the Black Leg went for him.

Unfortunately, he went for the Mage instead. He hit her hard across the face and she went down easier than Arthur had ever imagined, crumpling to the ground. Arthur tackled him around the middle and found himself hitting the Black Leg over and over until the guards dragged him away.

“I’m fine,” the Mage said as Arthur stared at his hands. The knuckles were split and aching, already starting to swell, but not all of the blood was his. He dragged his hand over his face, uncaring, and turned to look at her. The bruise hadn’t bloomed yet, but the skin of her cheek and around her eye were red.

She made a noise of annoyance at the blood on his face, and dragged him to his feet. “Dramatic,” she pronounced.

“You went down fast,” he said helplessly.

She started to lead him into the palace proper. “I don’t like to be hit.”

“No,” he said. “No.”

She glanced at him and half laughed. “Your law might need some more work.”

He sighed. “It won’t work, will it?”

“It will work,” she said. “Eventually.”

The mark on her face had started to darken and swell. In an hour she wouldn’t be able to see out of that eye. “That’s an awful lot of faith for someone with a black eye,” he said.

She stopped and turned to face him. When his gaze slid to the rapidly forming bruise, she clicked her tongue like he was truculent horse. “All change is painful. It will work. It will not be easy.”

“Nothing ever is,” he said.

“It hasn’t stopped you yet,” she said. “Now wash off that blood. It seems we need do some weeding.”


End file.
